“Apple’s lower cost 8GB iPhone 5c scales down its entry cost by dropping 8GB, but ends up with only 3.7GB less available room for apps, pics and other user data as Samsung’s 16GB Galaxy S4, thanks to more efficient storage use and the lack of third party bundles and offers,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider.

“The new 8GB iPhone 5c creates a new, lower price point for sensitive markets including the U.K. and China. It ships with 4.9GB available to users, which will be easy to fill. Apple’s newly free Garage Band, iMovie, iPhoto and iWork apps together weigh in at nearly 3GB, and user photos and email can also quickly add up,” Dilger reports. “Apple has addressed mobile storage issues for users with its free iCloud service, which lets users store music, videos and App Store purchases in the cloud so they can be downloaded only when needed. PhotoStream also captures the pictures users take, creating a iCloud backup that allows mobile users with limited storage to delete photos from their phone.”

Dilger reports, “Samsung wastes so much space on its 16GB Galaxy S4 that users are left with just a bit more space [8.56GB] than Apple’s new, lower end 8GB iPhone 5c, despite Samsung boasting twice as much storage as Apple’s newly introduced model.”

“When you buy a 16GB iPhone 5c, you get 12.60GB of storage space left over after taking into account iOS 7’s default install size,” John Brownlee reports for Cult of Mac.

“Comparatively, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was the worst bang for the buck, storage-wise, in smartphones: a paltry 8.56GB of internal space was available to the user to store apps and media upon,” Brownlee reports. “Even the S4, though, was roomy compared to the newly announced Galaxy S5. A 16GB Galaxy S5 comes with less than eight gigabytes of usable memory.”

Brownlee reports, “You can install apps, media and more to the card in the Galaxy S5’s microSD slot. But they will never run as quickly or as well as they run on the Galaxy S5 itself. At the end of the day, a 16GB Galaxy S5 only has 7.86GB of usable storage.”

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9 Comments

I remember when I was in an Apple store getting my iPad replaced (broken screen). A genius dude was sitting next to be trying to explain to some customer why their 8GB 4s was full (photos, it turns out) and the customer couldn’t load any music on to it. It was clear that this genius was quite frustrated with the 8GB option from Apple (gave me the impression he gave this speech a lot).

Must agree with an earlier MDN take: Apple is really taking the shine off their reputation by shipping 8GB models. Dilger can talk all day long about how this is only 3GB less than Samsung’s 16GB model, but the bottom line is that 3GB is almost *double* what the customer has free on the 8GB phone and that *is* a big deal at that level.

Price concerns not withstanding, Apple needs to make 16 GB the new baseline.

If they really want to compete on price, they need to develop a device to do exactly that. Something along the lines of the iPod shuffle — not fancy like the iPod Touch, but quite useful for its intended audience.

Again, there are many, many people for whom 8Gb is more than adequate. They care little for music, don’t much care for cramming the phone with apps, and spend most of their time on social media and taking snapshots on Instagram and Fb. I know these people, they’re friends and work colleagues, and most likely not the sort of people MDN or many on here hang with.
Unlike MDN, those who live out here in meatspace, a large percentage of iPhone users don’t really care about how much storage the phone has, they just want something that’s easy to use and reliable; I could really use an iPhone with 256Gb of storage, most people I know wouldn’t know what to do with 16.

I have had the same genius conversation with a co-worker and the phone was a 16gb. Data management is difficult to convey when hard drives come in terabytes and there’s no longer a need to delete or archive anything.

With this day of music movies & photos in the cloud it is a viable option (and those people who don’t need or want to keep 1000’s of photo’s or several hundred minutes of video of their cats on their phone)

So you are saying the option for a cheaper model (with less storage) for those who don’t need or want more should be removed?

Sorry that grates against my libertarian leanings. You can’t remove the option (that may be fine for some) simply so someone (who apparently didn’t care enough to see if it was enough storage or who has now changed their preferences for how much they want to keep on the phone) doesn’t “accidentally” buy less phone than they want or need.

It’s not good if the main thrust of your business is defending product margins rather than giving the customer the best experience possible, including giving him a comfortable amount of storage, which in this day and age should be 16GB. 8GB is simply inadequate no matter how Apple fanboys like Dilger try to justify it.

In fact Apple should start their baseline models at 32GB instead of the measly 16GB. The cost per GB of RAM of flash memory has gone done drastically in the last couple of years, yet Apple still persists in the old business model of ripping customers off. We should discard the past behind us and move forward into a new paradigm where consumers are put front and centre instead of being seen as a profit centre. That’s grasping capitalism at its worst.

I find these articles comparing the amount of storage available out of the box w/o also comparing what Apps are preloaded on the phones being compared to be rather uninformative to the end-user. Sure a bunch of that space could be bloatware but on the other hand could be useful for the user and would actually have required an App to be downloaded to the opposing device to match the missing functionality. This could change the available space significantly.

Yes, Tim Cook says he wants to provide the customer with the best experience, and I think 8GB is not it. Maybe this is about margins, maybe this is about Apple not able to have enough storage components to buy from Samsung or wherever to provide 16GB as baseline. But I think Apple should work towards it to provide the best experience soon. 16GB minimum provides good experience and good experience is a happy customer, and a happy customer means a customer for life. I mean, iPods now have minimum of 16GB — save for the shuffle. When Apple had 8GB iPod touches and nanos for very long time, I found that poor too. iPhones are music players too, and at least most Android phones can expand. I want Apple to shine, like when the day Apple revealed the first iPad. 16GB and 10″ screen for $499 instead of the high price people were expecting. That was huge and I applauded Apple for showing the way.